middle east

Pro-Assad forces raised the Syrian flag in the largely ruined city of Quneitra on Thursday, regained from surrendering rebels as the government tightens its hold on the Syrian sector of the Golan Heights, strategic territory bordering Israel and Jordan. A Reuters photographer saw uniformed men raise the Syrian national flag …

Islamic State militants killed more than 200 people in a coordinated assault on a government-held area of southwestern Syria on Wednesday, local officials and a war monitor said, in the group’s deadliest attack in the country for years. Jihadist fighters stormed several villages and staged suicide blasts in the provincial …

Israel said it shot down a Syrian warplane that crossed into the occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday, but Damascus said the jet was fired on as it took part in sorties against rebels within Syria. The incident added new fuel to weeks of tensions over the Golan, a strategic plateau …

Israel launched its newest air defense system on Monday on the Syrian frontier, where Damascus’s Russian-backed forces have been routing rebels, as Moscow sent envoys for what it called “urgent” talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu planned to meet Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and its armed forces …

Russian and Syrian jets stepped up their bombing of an Islamic State bastion along the Jordan-Israel border in southwestern Syria, as the militants pushed into areas abandoned by other rebel groups, diplomatic and opposition sources said. Islamic State-affiliated forces entrenched in the Yarmouk Basin, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights …

Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier along the Gaza border on Friday, said the Israeli military, which launched dozens of strikes into Gaza that killed four Palestinians, including three Hamas fighters. The soldier was the first to be killed on the Gaza front in active duty since a 2014 war …

Syrian rebels are due to start evacuating the border area with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Friday, leaving for rebel-held areas of the north under a surrender deal that will restore President Bashar al-Assad’s control of the frontier. “We are awaiting the start of the operation and God willing it …

Several roadside bombs and mortar rounds wounded 11 people in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, witnesses said. A police official said the bombs had targeted a commercial district of the city. Security forces in Iraq have largely defeated Islamic State militants, removing them from Mosul and …

An evacuation began overnight of thousands of people from two loyalist Syrian villages that are besieged by rebels in the northwest, a war monitor said, with the government expected to release hundreds of detainees in return. The Shi’ite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya are expected to be emptied of all …

Dozens of Syrians approached the Israeli frontier on the Golan Heights on Tuesday in an apparent attempt to seek help or sanctuary from a Russian-backed Syrian army offensive, before turning back after a warning from Israeli forces. Tens of thousands of Syrians have arrived near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied …